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Ion Luca Caragiale ([iˈon ˈluka karaˈd͡ʒjale]; commonly referred to as I. L. Caragiale; February 13 [O.S. February 1] 1852 – July 9, 1912) was a Wallachian-born Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist. Leaving behind an important cultural legacy, he is considered one of the greatest playwrights in Romanian language and literature, as well as one of its most important writers and a leading representative of local humor. Alongside Mihai Eminescu, Ioan Slavici and Ion Creangă, he is seen as one of the main representatives of Junimea, an influential literary society with which he nonetheless parted during the second half of his life. His work, spanning four decades, covers the ground between Neoclassicism, Realism, and Naturalism, building on an original synthesis of foreign and local influences.
Although few in number, Caragiale's plays constitute the most accomplished expression of Romanian theater, as well as being important venues for criticism of late 19th-century Romanian society. They include the comedies O noapte furtunoasă, Conu Leonida faţă cu reacţiunea, O scrisoare pierdută, and the tragedy Năpasta. In addition to these, Caragiale authored the melodrama O soacră, a large number of essays, articles, short stories, novellas and sketch stories, as well as occasional works of poetry and autobiographical texts such as Din carnetul unui vechi sufleur. In many cases, his creations were first published in one of several magazines he edited—Claponul, Moftul Român, Vatra and Epoca. Most of his prose works have been published under the title Momente şi schiţe: they include Căldură mare, Cănuţă om sucit, Două loturi, Grand Hotel "Victoria română", as well as several pieces referring to stock characters such as Lache and Mache, Marius Chicoş Rostogan and Mitică. In some of his later fiction writings, including La hanul lui Mânjoală, Kir Ianulea, Abu-Hasan, Pastramă trufanda and Calul dracului, Caragiale adopted the fantasy genre or turned to historical fiction.
Ion Luca Caragiale was interested in the politics of the Romanian Kingdom, and oscillated between the liberal current and conservatism. Most of his satirical works target the liberal republicans and the National Liberals, evidencing both his respect for their rivals at Junimea and his connections with the literary critic Titu Maiorescu. He came to clash with National Liberal leaders such as Dimitrie Sturdza and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, and was a lifelong adversary of the Symbolist poet Alexandru Macedonski. As a result of these conflicts, the most prominent of Caragiale's critics barred his access to the cultural establishment for several decades. During the 1890s, Caragiale rallied with the radical movement of George Panu, before associating with the Conservative Party. After having decided to settle in Berlin, he came to voice strong criticism for Romanian politicians of all colors in the wake of the 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt, and ultimately joined the Conservative-Democratic Party.
He was both a friend and rival to writers such as Eminescu, Maiorescu, and Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea, while maintaining contacts with, among others, the Junimist essayist Iacob Negruzzi, the socialist philosopher Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, the literary critic Paul Zarifopol, the poets George Coşbuc and Mite Kremnitz, the psychologist Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, and the Transylvanian poet and activist Octavian Goga. Ion Luca was the nephew of Luca and Iorgu Caragiale, who were major figures of mid-19th century Romanian theater. His sons Mateiu and Luca were both modernist writers.
Ion Luca Caragiale was born into a family of Greek descent, whose members first arrived in Wallachia soon after 1812, during the rule of Prince Ioan Gheorghe Caragea—Ştefan Caragiali, as his grandfather was known locally, worked as a cook for the court in Bucharest. Ion Luca's father, who reportedly originated from the Ottoman capital of Istanbul, settled in Prahova County as the curator of the Mărgineni Monastery (which, at the time, belonged to the Greek Orthodox Saint Catherine's Monastery of Mount Sinai). Known to locals as Luca Caragiali, he later built a reputation as a lawyer and judge in Ploieşti, and married Ecaterina, the daughter of a merchant from the Transylvanian town of Braşov. Her maiden name was given as Alexovici (Alexevici) or as Karaboa (Caraboa). She is known to have been Greek herself, and, according to historian Lucian Nastasă, some of her relatives were Hungarian members of the Tabay family. The Caragiali couple also had a daughter, named Lenci.
Ion Luca's uncles, Costache and Iorgu Caragiale, also known as Caragiali, managed theater troupes and were very influential figures in the development of early Romanian theater—in Wallachia and Moldavia alike. Luca Caragiali had himself performed with his brothers during his youth, before opting to settle down. All three had stood criticism for not taking part in the Wallachian Revolution, and defended themselves through a brochure printed in 1848. The brothers Caragiali had two sisters, Ecaterina and Anastasia.
Especially in his old age, the writer emphasized his family's humble background and his status as a self-made man. On one occasion, he defined the landscape of his youth as "the quagmires of Ploieşti". Although it prompted his biographer Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea to define him as "a proletarian", Caragiale's account was disputed by several other researchers, who noted that the family had a good social standing.
Ion Luca Caragiale was discreet about his ethnic origin for the larger part of his life. In parallel, his foreign roots came to the attention of his adversaries, who used them as arguments in various polemics. As his relations with Caragiale degenerated into hostility, Mihai Eminescu is known to have referred to his former friend as "that Greek swindler". Aware of such treatment, the writer considered all references to his lineage to be insults. On several occasions, he preferred to indicate that he was "of obscure birth".
Nevertheless, as literary critic Tudor Vianu noted, Caragiale's outlook on life was explicitly Balkanic and Oriental, which, in Vianu's view, mirrored a type "which must have been found in his lineage". A similar opinion was expressed by Paul Zarifopol, who speculated that Caragiale's conservative mindset was possibly owed to the "lazyness of one true Oriental" (elsewhere, he referred to the writer as "a lazy southerner, fitted with definitely supranormal intelligence and imagination"). In his main work on the history of Romanian literature, George Călinescu included Caragiale among a group of "Balkan" writers, whose middle class status and often foreign origin, he argued, set them apart irrespective of their period—others in this category were, in chronological order, Anton Pann, Tudor Arghezi, Ion Minulescu, Urmuz, Mateiu Caragiale, and Ion Barbu. In contrast, critic Garabet Ibrăileanu proposed that Caragiale's Wallachian origin was of particular importance, serving to explain his political choices and alleged social bias.
On one occasion, Caragiale mentioned that his paternal grandfather was "a Greek cook". In several contexts, he referred to his roots as being in the island of Hydra. In one of his photographs, he posed in Oriental costume and sitting cross-legged, which was interpreted by Vianu as an additional reference to his Balkan background. Two of his biographers, Zarifopol and Şerban Cioculescu, noted that a section of Caragiale's fairy tale Kir Ianulea was a likely self-reference: in that fragment of text, the Christian Devil, disguised as an Arvanite trader, is shown taking pride in his Romanian language skills.
Investigations carried out by the Center of Theatric Research in Athens, Greece and made public in 2002 offered an alternative take on the Caragiales' origin. According to this perspective, Ştefan Caragiali was a native of Kefalonia, and his original surname, Karaialis, was changed on Prince Caragea's request. Various authors also believe that Caragiale's ancestors were Albanian or Aromanian.
Originally, Ion Luca was known as Ioanne L. Caragiali. His family and friends knew him as Iancu or, rarely, Iancuţu—both being antiquated hypocoristics of Ion. The definitive full version of his features the syllable ca twice in a row, which is generally avoided in Romanian due to its scatological connotations. It has however become one of the few cacophonies accepted by the Romanian Academy.
Early years
Born in the village of Haimanale, Prahova County (the present-day I. L. Caragiale commune, Dâmboviţa County), Caragiale was educated in Ploieşti. During his early years, as he later indicated, he learned reading and writing with a teacher at the Romanian Orthodox Church of Saint George. Soon after, he was taught literary Romanian by the Transylvanian-born Bazilie Dragoşescu (whose influence on his use of the language he was to acknowledge in one of his later works). At the age of seven, he witnessed enthusiastic celebrations of the Danubian Principalities' union, with the election of Moldavia's Alexandru Ioan Cuza as Prince of Wallachia; Cuza's subsequent reforms were to be an influence on the political choices Caragiale made in his old age. The new ruler visited his primary school later in 1859, being received with enthusiasm by Dragoşescu and all his pupils.
Caragiale completed gymnasium at the Sfinţii Petru şi Pavel school in the city, and never pursued any form of higher education. He was probably enlisted directly in the second grade, as records do not show him to have attended or graduated the first year. Notably, Caragiale was taught history by Constantin Iennescu, who was later the mayor of Ploieşti. The young Caragiale opted to follow in his uncles' footsteps, and was taught declamation and mimic art by Costache at the latter's theater school in Bucharest, where he was accompanied by his mother and sister. It is also probable that he was a supernumerary actor for the National Theater Bucharest. He was not able to find full employment in this field, and, around the age of 18, worked as a copyist for the Prahova County Tribunal. Throughout his life, Caragiale refused to talk about his training in the theater, and hid it from the people closest to him (including his wife Alexandrina Burelly, who came from an upper middle class environment).
In 1866, Caragiale witnessed Cuza's toppling by a coalition of conservatives and liberals—as he later acknowledged in his Grand Hotel "Victoria Română", he and his friends agreed to support the move by voting "yes" during a subsequent plebiscite, and, with tacit approval from the new authorities, even did so several times each. By the age of 18, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the liberal current, and sympathized with its republican ideals. In 1871, he witnessed the Republic of Ploieşti—a short-lived stated created by the liberal groups, in an attempt to oust Domnitor Carol I (the future King of Romania). Later in life, as his opinions veered towards conservatism, Caragiale ridiculed both the attempted coup d'état and his participation in it.
He returned to Bucharest later that year, after manager Mihail Pascaly hired him as one of the prompts at the National Theater in the capital, a period about which he reminisced in his Din carnetul unui vechi sufleur. The poet Mihai Eminescu, with whom Ion Luca was to have cordial relations as well as rivalries, had previously been employed for the same position by the manager Iorgu Caragiale. In addition to his growing familiarity with the repertoire, the young Caragiale educated himself by reading the philosophical works of Enlightenment-era philosophes. It was also recorded that, at some point between 1870 and 1872, he was employed in the same capacity by the Moldavian National Theater in Iaşi. During the period, Caragiale also proofread for various publications and worked as a tutor.
Literary debut
Ion Luca made his literary debut in 1873, at the age of 21, with poems and humorous chronicles printed in G. Dem. Teodorescu's liberal-inspired satirical magazine Ghimpele. He published relatively few articles under various pen names—among them Car., the contraction of his family name, and the more elaborate Palicar. He mostly performed basic services for the editorial staff and its printing press, given that, after Luca Caragiali died in 1870, he was the sole provider for his mother and sister. Following his return to Bucharest, he became even more involved with the radical and republican wing of the liberal trend—a movement commonly referred to as "the Reds". As he later confessed, he frequently attended its congresses, witnessing the speeches held by Reds leader C. A. Rosetti; he thus became intimately acquainted with a Populist discourse, which he later parodied in his works. Working for Ghimpele, he made the acquaintance of republican writer N. T. Orăşanu.
Several of his articles for Ghimpele were sarcastic in tone, and targeted various literary figures of the day. In June 1874, Caragiale amused himself at the expense of N. D. Popescu-Popnedea, the author of popular almanacs, whose taste he questioned. Soon after, he ridiculed the rising poet Alexandru Macedonski, who had publicized his claim that he was a "Count Geniadevsky", and thus of Polish origin. The article contributed by Caragiale, in which he speculated that Macedonski (referred to with the anagram Aamsky) was using the name solely because it reminded people of the word "genius", was the first act in a long polemic between the two literary figures. Caragiale turned Aamsky into a character on his own, envisaging his death as a result of overwork in editing magazines "for the country's political development".
Caragiale also contributed poetry to Ghimpele: two sonnets, and a series of epigrams (one of which was another attack on Macedonski). The first of these works, an 1873 sonnet dedicated to baritone Agostino Mazzoli, is believed to have been his first contribution to the belles-lettres (as opposed to journalism).
In 1896, Macedonski reflected with irony:
"As early as 1872, the clients of some beer gardens in the capital have had the occasion to welcome among them of a noisy young man, a bizarre spirit who seemed destined, were he to have devoted himself to letters or the arts, to be entirely original. Indeed, this young man's appearance, his hasty gestures, his sarcastic smile [...], his always irritated and mocking voice, as well as his sophistic reasoning easily attracted attention."
Over the following years, Caragiale collaborated on various mouthpieces of the newly created National Liberal Party, and, in May 1877, created the satirical magazine Claponul. Later in 1877, he also translated a series of French-language plays for the National Theater: Alexandre Parodi's Rome vaincue (it was showcased in late 1877-early 1878), Paul Déroulède's L'Hetman, and Eugène Scribe's Une camaraderie. Together with the French republican Frédéric Damé, he also headed a short-lived journal, Naţiunea Română.
It was also then that he contributed a serialized overview of Romanian theater, published by the newspaper România Liberă, in which Caragiale attacked the inferiority of Romanian dramaturgy and the widespread recourse to plagiarism. According to literary historian Perpessicius, the series constituted "one of the most solid critical contributions to the history of our theater".
Macedonski later alleged that, in his contributions to the liberal newspapers, the young writer had libeled several Conservative Party politicians—when researching this period, Şerban Cioculescu concluded that the accusation was false, and that only one polemical article on a political topic could be traced back to Caragiale.
Timpul and Claponul
The young journalist began drifting away from National Liberal politics soon after 1876, when the group came to power with Ion Brătianu as Premier. According to many versions, Eminescu, who was working on the editorial staff of the main Conservative newspaper, Timpul, asked to be joined by Caragiale and the Transylvanian prose writer Ioan Slavici, who were both employed by the paper. This order of events remains unclear, and depends on sources saying that Eminescu was employed by the paper in March 1876. Other testimonies indicate that it was actually Eminescu who arrived last, beginning work in January 1878.
Slavici later recalled that three of them engaged in lengthy discussions at Timpul's headquarters on Calea Victoriei and in Eminescu's house on Sfinţilor Street, where they planned to co-author a massive work on Romanian grammar. According to literary historian Tudor Vianu, the relationship between Caragiale and Eminescu partly replicated that between the latter and the Moldavian Ion Creangă.
Over that period, Timpul and Eminescu were engaged in a harsh polemic with the Reds, and especially their leader Rosetti. It was also then that Romania entered the Russo-Turkish War as a means to secure her complete independence from the Ottoman Empire. Caragiale reportedly took little interest in editing Timpul over that period, but it is assumed that several unsigned chronicles, covering foreign events, are his contributions (as are two short story adaptations of works by the American author Edgar Allan Poe, both published by Timpul in spring-summer 1878). The newspaper was actually issued as a collaborative effort, which makes it hard to identify the authors of many other articles. According to Slavici, Caragiale occasionally completed unfinished contributions by Eminescu whenever the latter had to leave unexpectedly.
He concentrated instead on Claponul, which he edited and wrote single-handedly for the duration of the war. Zarifopol believed that, through the series of light satires he contributed for the magazine, Caragiale was trying out his style, and thus "entertaining the suburbanites, in order to study them". A piece he authored of the time featured an imaginary barber and amateur artist, Năstase Ştirbu, who drew a direct parallel between art, literature and cutting hair—both the theme and the character were to be reused in his later works. Similarly, a fragment of prose referring to two inseparable friends, Şotrocea and Motrocea, was to serve as the first draft for the Lache and Mache series in Momente şi schiţe. Another notable work of the time is Pohod la şosea, a rhyming reportage documenting the Russian Army's arrival to Bucharest, and the street reactions to the event. Claponul ceased publication in early 1878.
Junimea reception
It was probably through Eminescu that Ion Luca Caragiale came into contact with the Iaşi-based Junimea, the influential literary society which was also a center for anti-National Liberal politics. Initially, Caragiale met with Junimea founder, the critic and politician Titu Maiorescu, during a visit to the house of Dr. Kremnitz, physician to the family of Domnitor Carol I. The doctor's wife and Maiorescu's sister-in-law, Mite Kremnitz, was herself a writer, and later became Eminescu's lover. During several meetings, Caragiale was asked by Maiorescu to write down a series of aphorisms in an album. His concise musings are contemplative in tone, and some of them constitute evidence of both misanthropy and, to a certain degree, misogyny.
In 1878, Caragiale and Maiorescu left for Iaşi, where they attended Junimea 's 15th anniversary, and where Caragiale read his first draft of the celebrated play O noapte furtunoasă. The work, ridiculing the petite bourgeoisie 's mix of liberal values and demagogy over a background of superficial culture, immediately struck a chord with the majority-conservative grouping. Its reception was one of the pivotal moments in the second period of Junimea activities, characterized by the society's expansion to Bucharest and its patronage of the arts. Other writers who marked this stage were Creangă, Slavici, Vasile Alecsandri and Vasile Conta—together with Caragiale, they soon became the foremost representatives of Junimea 's direct influence on literature. To varying degrees, they all complimented the main element of Junimist discourse, Maiorescu criticism of "forms without a foundation"—the concept itself referred to the negative impact of modernization, which, Junimea argued, had by then only benefited the upper strata of Romanian society, leaving the rest with an incomplete and increasingly falsified culture.
Ion Luca Caragiale also associated with Junimea's mouthpiece, Convorbiri Literare, and continued to contribute there even after 1885, when the society began to decline in importance. It was here that all his major comedies were first presented to the public. He did not, however, join Petre P. Carp's movement, which aimed to consolidate Junimea as a third force in Romanian politics, and remained a staunch independent over the following years. Caragiale was nevertheless associated with the Junimist journal Constituţionalul.
In early January 1879, O noapte furtunoasă was first staged by the National Theater. Its production brought the first association between Caragiale and comedian Mihai Mateescu, who went on to portray some of his most popular characters. The play was a hit, and acclaim reached Caragiale despite the fact that he had refused to have his name printed on the posters. Caragiale was soon outraged to discover that, by the second staging, his text had been toned down by the government-appointed Head of Theaters, the National Liberal Ion Ghica. When he asked for an official explanation, O noapte furtunoasă was removed from the season's program. Over the following years, independent troupes staged the play or its plagiarized versions for their own benefit. It was restored to the National Theater's repertoire in 1883, and was so successful that state theaters in cities such as Craiova and Iaşi made efforts to have it included in their own programs.
Caragiale subsequently took part in directing his plays at the National Theater, where his main collaborator was actor and manager Constantin I. Nottara. Together, they are credited with having put a stop to the techniques favored by Mihail Pascaly, replacing emphatic declamation with a more natural and studied perspective on acting.
Inspector general
In 1880, he printed Conu Leonida faţă cu reacţiunea—a play centered on an uncultured "Red" pensioner and his naive wife, who overhear a street brawl and believe that a revolution is imminent. It was also then that his first memoirs from the world of theater were published, which coincided with the release of Ion Creangă's own book of memoirs, the well-known volume Amintiri din copilărie.
Accompanied by Maiorescu, Caragiale left for Austria-Hungary. In Vienna, the two of them attended a staging of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, hosted by the Burgtheater. He was practically unemployed after returning, and, in 1881, gave up his position at Timpul. Nevertheless, that autumn, V. A. Urechia, Minister of Education in the Ion Brătianu National Liberal cabinet, assigned him the office of inspector general for the Moldavian counties of Suceava and Neamţ. Profiting from the proximity between his new residence and Iaşi, Ion Luca Caragiale became a regular participant in Junimea's activities, becoming good friends with some of its most important representatives (Iacob Negruzzi, Vasile Pogor, and Petru Th. Missir). With Negruzzi, he dramatized Hatmanul Baltag, a short story by Nicolae Gane.
He became close to Veronica Micle, a woman writer who was also Eminescu's mistress. For a while, Caragiale and Micle had a love affair, although she continued to see the poet. This caused the friendship between Eminescu and Caragiale to sour. The former was jealous of Cargiale's relations with Micle, while she resented the poet's affair with Mite Kremnitz.
Just one year after, Caragiale was moved back to Wallachia, becoming inspector general in Argeş and Vâlcea. He was ultimately stripped of this position in 1884, and found himself on the verge of bankruptcy; he thus accepted the lowly position of clerk for the civil registry administration. It is probably during this period that his melodrama O soacră was written and published—Caragiale, who was aware of its faults, indicated that it was a work from his youth, and dated it to 1876. His account is challenged by several details in the text.
In June 1883, while visiting Maiorescu's house, he received news that Eminescu had suffered the first in a series of dementia attacks (owing to a disease that was to kill him in 1889). Caragiale reportedly broke into tears. This succession of events also saw him becoming involved in conflicts among Junimea members: like Pogor, Caragiale objected to the style of Vasile Alecsandri, an aged Junimist poet, and was shocked to find out that he was ridiculing the much younger Eminescu. He thus decided to criticize Alecsandri in public, during a March 1884 meeting of the society—Maiorescu recorded in his private notes that "[...] Caragiale [was] aggressive and rude toward Alecsandri."
Caragiale's wealthy relative, Catinca Momulo Cardini (commonly known Catinca Momuloaia), who was the widow of a famous restaurateur and the cousin of his mother Ecaterina, died in 1885, and the writer had the prospect of inheriting a large fortune. He nonetheless became involved in a trial with Momuloaia's other relatives, which prolonged itself until the early 20th century.
First major successes
Months after this, his new comedy, O scrisoare pierdută, was first shown to the public. A fresco of conflicting political machines, provincial corruption, petty ambitions, and incoherent demagogy, it was an instant hit with the public. Arguably the high point of Caragiale's career, it became one of the best-known works of its kind in Romanian literature. Maiorescu was pleased by its success, and believed that it was a sign of maturity in Romanian society, which, as he put it, was "starting to laugh" at the National Liberal rhetoric.
Ion Luca Caragiale was romantically involved with an unmarried young woman, Maria Constantinescu, who worked for the Bucharest Town Hall—in 1885, she gave birth to Mateiu, whom Caragiale recognized as his son.
During the same year, Caragiale's D-ale carnavalului, a lighter satire of suburban morals and amorous misadventures, was received with booing and heckling by members of the public—critics deemed it "immoral", due to its frank depiction of adultery gone unpunished. The controversy saw Maiorescu taking his friend's side and publishing an essay highly critical of National Liberal cultural tenets (titled Comediile domnului Caragiale, it was to be reprinted in 1889, as a preface to Caragiale's collected plays). In it, the critic, who was influenced by the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer, argued that Caragiale had not failed in uplifting the human spirit, precisely because he had risen above both didacticism and egotism (see Arthur Schopenhauer's aesthetics). In reference to accusations that the play was unpatriotic, Maiorescu answered:
"[...] the present-day poems with a political intent, the odes on solemn days, the theatrical compositions for dynastic glorifications are a simulacrum of art, and not the real art. Even patriotism, the most important sense for the citizen of a state in his actions as a citizen, has no place in art as an ad-hoc form of patriotism [...]. Is there a single lyric of French patriotism in Corneille? Is there any national spouting in Racine? Is there one in Molière? Is there one in Shakespeare? Is there one in Goethe?"
The article played an essential part in reconciling the dramatist to the general public, but also led to a polemic between Maiorescu and the philosopher Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea (a Marxist who claimed that Maiorescu was contradicting himself). Dobrogeanu-Gherea argued in favor of Caragiale's work, but considered D-ale carnavalului to be his weakest play.
Theater leadership and marriage
Despite his earlier conflicts with the National Liberals, Caragiale, who still faced problems in making a living, agreed to contribute pieces for the party press, and thus briefly associated with Voinţa Naţională (a journal issued by historian and politician Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol). Under the pen name Luca, he contributed two theater chronicles. In parallel, he taught classes at the privately run Sfântul Gheorghe High School in Bucharest. This episode of his career ended in 1888, when Maiorescu ascended to the office of Minister of Education in the Teodor Rosetti cabinet (formed by a group of Junimist Conservatives). Caragiale requested to be appointed Head of Theaters, which also implied leadership of the National Theater. Although Maiorescu was initially opposed, Caragiale eventually received the post. The ultimate decision was attributed to Romania's Queen Elisabeth having asked Maiorescu to reconsider, or, alternatively, to the support offered by the influential Junimist Petre P. Carp.
The appointment caused some controversy at the time: Ion Luca Caragiale, unlike all his predecessors (the incumbent C. I. Stăncescu included), was both a professional in the field and a person of modest origins. As the National Liberals intensified their campaign against him, the dramatist drafted an open letter for the Bucharest press, outlining his intentions and explaining the circumstances of his appointment. In it, he attributed his own rise to the interest Junimea had taken in his work, while defending the literary society, which was, as he put it, "lost from the public eye at a time of political obscurity". Reviewing his own merits as a writer and manager, he elaborated and later put into practice a program for state-run theaters—according to Vianu, it signified "punctuality and rigor". He nonetheless resigned at the end of the season, and resumed his literary activities.
In January 1889, he married Alexandrina, the daughter of architect Gaetano Burelly. She was a member of the Bucharest elite, which served to improve Ion Luca Caragiale's social standing. They had two children of their own: Luca (known as Luky; born 1893) and Ecaterina (or Tuşchi; born 1894, later married Logadi). Several years later, the Caragiales brought Mateiu into their home, and Ion Luca enrolled him at Anghel Demetrescu's Sfântul Gheorghe College.
Clash with the Academy
Early in 1890, at the same time as his volume of collected works, Caragiale published and staged his rural-themed tragedy Năpasta—both writings were presented for consideration to the Romanian Academy, in view of receiving its annual prize, the Ion Heliade Rădulescu Award. Caragiale's conflict with the National Liberals reached its peak, as two of their representatives inside the forum, historian Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu and future Premier Dimitrie Sturdza, reported unfavorably. Additional criticism was voiced by the poet Gheorghe Sion, who also defended the a work by Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea (itself up for review). When the Junimist Iacob Negruzzi defended his friend, Sturdza contrasted Caragiale's works with his own version of didacticism, claiming that it altogether lacked a moral and national quality.
Both Hasdeu and Sturdza hinted at the influence exercised over Caragiale by their adversary Maiorescu, and went on to compare the dramatist with foreign writers such as Mite Kremnitz and the Jewish Josef B. Brociner. For the two liberal leaders, Kremnitz and Brociner, who had authored works critical of the Romanian establishment, were aiding to construct a negative image of the Romanian nation. Hasdeu insisted that Caragiale was himself creating problems for the country, while Sturza, showing himself more lenient in this respect, insisted that Caragiale's plays had failed to display a love for "the truth, the beautiful and the good". He stressed:
"Mr. Caragiale should learn how to respect his nation, and not mock it."
Sturdza's discourse contributed to the Academy's negative vote (20 votes against and 3 in favor), and rose Caragiale's anger. In parallel, Dobrogeanu-Gherea's candidature for the prize was rejected with 16 votes against and 8 for. In 1897, writing for the Conservative paper Epoca, the writer lashed out at Sturdza and his partisans, claiming that they viewed all humorous talents as "unholy", "useless to the nation", and "downright perilous". Vianu noted that Caragiale's article directly aimed at Sturdza's reverence for Jacobinism, collectivism, and nationalism, which, in Caragiale's own words,
"manipulated the baggage of big words with which the phony liberal school has been filling empty heads for fifty years on end".
Split with Junimea
During the controversy, Caragiale published two memoirs of Eminescu—the poet had died in June 1889. One of them was titled În Nirvana ("Into Nirvana"), and notably expanded on the early years of their friendship and on one of Eminescu's earliest amorous disappointments. In an essay of the following year, he showed himself critical of a wave of Eminescu imitators, commenting: "A lot of reasonable people will walk the path and [...] of the people that know them only a few will raise their hats; whereas an insane person [...] will be followed by all the people. That is why the success of the [1890 Eminescu edition] has overcome all the editors' expectations". He also reprinted his recollections from the world of theater, alongside pieces originally published in Claponul and various new satirical pieces.
Although this attack owed much to Junimea's discourse, Caragiale had by then turned against Maiorescu, probably due to his perception that the society had failed to support his cause at the Academy. In May 1892, he used a public conference at the Romanian Athenaeum as a venue to make known his claims against the former Minister of Education and his associates, which caused a definitive rift between the two public figures. Caragiale also wrote Două note ("Two Notes"), an article accusing Maiorescu of having modified and censored some of Eminescu's poems, and of having exploited the poet for financial gain. Around that time, he ceased contributing to Convorbiri Literare.
Late in 1892, Caragiale published two volumes of prose, including his new novellas Păcat, O făclie de Paşte and Om cu noroc. The following year, he began frequenting socialist circles as an outsider to the cause, and soon became good friends with the Imperial Russian-born Marxist thinker Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea. Financial constraints forced Caragiale to become an entrepreneur, and, in November of that year, opened a beer garden near Gabroveni Inn, in Bucharest's Lipscani area. He probably moved on soon after, and purchased a pub on a neighboring street. In a letter he wrote at the time, the writer showed that he was planning to move to Transylvania, and considered starting a career as a teacher.
In November 1893, as a gesture of goodwill towards his adversary, Alexandru Macedonski authored an article in Literatorul, in which he asked authorities if it was normal for a former Head of Theaters not to have a stable source of income—the intended recipient did not acknowledge this offer, and the Caragiale-Macedonski conflict escalated after he continued to attack the latter in the press. One year later, Caragiale leased the restaurant catering to the train station in Buzău (just like Dobrogeanu-Gherea had done in Ploieşti). His successive businesses were all struggling, and Caragiale was often on the verge of bankruptcy. Although he invested time and work in the enterprise, and even affiliated with the International Association of Waiters for a short period, he eventually decided not to renew his contract upon the years' end. His period in Buzău was noted for its other results: in February 1895, the press reported that Caragiale had given a public lecture on "the causes of human stupidity".
Moftul Român and Vatra
Together with the socialist activist Tony Bacalbaşa and the illustrator Constantin Jiquidi, he established the satirical magazine Moftul Român, which ceased print after a few months, before being revived in 1901 and becoming an important venue for social criticism. The new publication's spirit was indebted to Junimist discourse. Its title, translatable as "the Romanian trifle" or "the Romanian nonsense", alluded to the cynicism and self-importance of the emerging modern Romanian society. According to Vianu, this was a theme first debated by Junimea's Theodor Rosetti. Moft! thus mimicked the common answer to any important or merely exacerbated problem, and Caragiale also used it to illustrate what he saw as a common national feature. In one of his early editorials for the magazine, he claimed that moft was to Romanians what spleen (melancholy) was to the English people, nihilism to the Russians, chauvinism to the Hungarians, and vendetta to the Italians.
In parallel, Cargiale resumed his contacts with Transylvanian intellectuals: with George Coşbuc and Ioan Slavici, he founded the magazine Vatra (January 1, 1894), before withdrawing from its leadership. During his short stay, he printed an unsigned sketch story, Cum se înţeleg ţăranii ("How Peasants Communicate"), which mockingly recorded a lengthy and redundant dialog between two villagers, as well as a portrait of the deceased politician Mihail Kogălniceanu, and a fairy tale inspired by the writings of Anton Pann. He also translated a novella authored by his friend, Queen Elisabeth, under the title Răzbunare ("Revenge")—he is known to have been annoyed by the longueurs of the piece, and struck out large portions of it to improve the flow.
During the same period, Caragiale had the initiative to publish short fragments he had translated from classical pieces, leaving readers to guess who their authors were—Vianu, citing the speculations made by other critics, presumed that these were writers admired by both Caragiale and his friend, the schoolteacher Anghel Demetrescu (Thomas Carlyle, Alexis de Tocqueville, Thomas Babington Macaulay, François Guizot and Augustin Thierry). It was also then that he authored a piece on Prince Ferdinand, the heir apparent, who had fallen severely ill—it shows Caragiale to be a passionate defender of the Romanian monarchy, praying for Ferdinand's health. In 1898, he wrote a lengthy essay on the state of Romanian theater, in which he notably praised the actor Ion Brezeanu, who made his name through portrayals of Caragiale's characters, for, among others, his "sober and refined interpretation". Later that year, he published a new novella, În vreme de război, a fantasy set to the background of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878.
Radical Party
In 1895, at the age of 43, Caragiale decided to join the Radical Party, led at the time by former Junimist George Panu; one year later, he began contributing to its mouthpiece, the newspaper Ziua. He was also briefly associated with the newspaper Sara, published in Iaşi. Despite this, Caragiale was again an associate of the National Liberals later the same year, when the Conservative cabinet of Lascăr Catargiu was replaced with one led by Dimitrie Sturdza. Articles he contributed to Gazeta Poporului, a National Liberal newspaper, were centered on new attacks against Junimea and were signed with the pseudonyms i and Ion. In mid-November 1895, Gazeta Poporului published an unsigned article which discussed the suicide of writer Alexandru Odobescu, investigating the mundane reasons behind it—the piece is generally attributed to Caragiale. The writer placed the blame for Odobescu's death on his much younger lover, Hortensia Racoviţă, and hailed his wife, Saşa Odobescu, as a model of devoted womanhood.
This episode of his life coincided with a period when relations between Romania and Austria-Hungary were extremely tense. Three years before, ethnic Romanian leaders in Austro-Hungarian-ruled Transylvania had signed the Transylvanian Memorandum, which inflamed passions among the Hungarians and led the authors to be indicted. Conservative Party politicians in Romania had succeeded in negotiating an amnesty, but their policies were overturned by the National Liberals, who appealed to nationalist and irredentist sentiment.
Thus, Sturdza offered a measure of support to Eugen Brote, Tribuna editor and National Romanian Party activist. Brote, who fled Transylvania and planned to directly implicate the Romanian Kingdom into the conflict, attempted to replace the pro-Conservative leadership of the National Party with a selection of politicians favored by the National Liberals. As Sturdza came to lead the cabinet, both he and Brote retracted their previous statements, but again provoked the National Party by alleging that its leaders were the actual radicals. In harsh terms, Caragiale exposed the understanding Sturdza had with Brote. Soon after, he authored a short story about a con artist who traveled to the imagined Transylvanian town of Opidul-nou, posing as the nationalist Romanian writer Alexandru Vlahuţă as a means to live off the local intelligentsia. In October 1897, he was outraged by news that Sturdza had given in to Austro-Hungarian demands, and that he had expelled Transylvanian nationalists from Romania: Caragiale held a speech in which he argued that Romanians living abroad were "indispensable" to the Romanian state.
Epoca
In 1895, the writer followed the Radical group into its unusual merger with the Conservative Party. This came at a time of unified opposition, when the Junimists themselves returned to their group of origin. Caragiale came to identify with the policies endorsed by a new group of Conservative leaders, Nicolae Filipescu and Alexandru Lahovari among them. He was upset when Lahovari died not too long after, and authored his obituary.
Caragiale also became a collaborator on Filipescu's journal Epoca and editor of its literary supplement. A chronicle he contributed at the time discussed the philosophical writings of Dobrogeanu-Gherea: while sympathetic to his conclusions, Caragiale made a clear statement that he was not interested in the socialist doctrine or any other ideology ("Any idea, opinion or system is absolutely irrelevant to me, in the most absolute sense"). He also published an article criticizing Dimitrie Sturdza; its title, O lichea (roughly: "A Scoundrel"), was reluctantly accepted by Epoca, and only after Caragiale claimed that it reflected the original meaning of the word lichea ("stain"), explaining that it referred to Sturdza's unusual persistence in politics.
When answering to one of Epoca's inquiries, he showed that he had yet again come to reevaluate Junimea, and found it to be an essential institution in Romanian culture. Nevertheless, he was distancing himself from the purest Junimist tenets, and took a favorable view of Romantic writers whom the society had criticized or ridiculed—among these, he indicated his personal rival Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, whom he acknowledged to be among "the most remarkable figures of our literature", and Alexandru Odobescu. As editor of Epoca, he published works by Hasdeu alongside those of his other contemporaries and predecessors—Grigore Alexandrescu, Nicolae Filimon, Dinicu Golescu, Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Cilibi Moise, Costache Negruzzi, and Anton Pann. He also took a more sympathetic but still distant view of Maiorescu. At the time, he befriended the young poet Cincinat Pavelescu, and helped to promote his works in the press.
Universul
Around that time, Caragiale began collaborating with the formerly Junimist figure Mihail Dragomirescu, who enlisted his anonymous contributions to the magazine Convorbiri Critice. Again pressed by financial problems, he returned to a bureaucratic post—this time with the administration of government monopolies, and appointed by the Conservative cabinet of Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino in June 1899. In 1901, the position was suppressed due to cutbacks in budget spending. This coincided with Sturdza's third mandate as Premier, and further aggravated the conflict between the two figures.
At the same time, Caragiale was contributing to Luigi Cazzavillan's newly founded daily, Universul, where he was assigned the column "Notiţe critice" ("Critical Notes"). This material formed the bulk of his collected short prose volume, Momente şi schiţe, and notably comprised satirical pieces ridiculing the Romanian press' reaction to the activities of Boris Sarafov, a Macedonian-Bulgarian revolutionary who had attempted to set up a base in Romania.
He continued to pursue a business career, and, in 1901, inaugurated his own company, Berăria cooperativă, which took over the Gambrinus pub in front of the National Theater. It soon became the site of a literary circle, which included, among others, Tony Bacalbaşa and Ion Brezeanu, the satirist Dumitru Constantinescu-Teleormăneanu (known as Teleor), and the academic I. Suchianu. At the time, the Caragiales rented a house in Bucharest, near the present-day Bulevardul Magheru.
In early 1901, as Ion Luca Caragiale entered his 25th year in literature, his friends offered him a banquet at Gambrinus, where speeches were given by Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea and the Conservative politician Take Ionescu, and where a special single-issue magazine, Caragiale, was circulated among the guests. Hasdeu put aside his differences in opinion and sent in a congratulatory letter. In it, he deemed the dramatist "Romania's Molière". Nevertheless, on March 23, 1902, the National Liberal majority in the Romanian Academy, headed by Sturdza, refused to consider Momente şi schiţe for the Năsturel Herăscu Award—despite a favorable report from Dimitrie C. Ollănescu-Ascanio.
Caion scandal
Soon after, Caragiale became involved in a major literary scandal. Constantin Al. Ionescu-Caion, a journalist and student whom Tudor Vianu described as "a real pathological character", issued a claim that, in his Năpasta, the Romanian dramatist had plagiarized the work of a Hungarian-language author named István Kemény. Caion expanded on this in articles published by Revista Literară, where he provided direct comparisons between the two texts. This was received with enthusiasm by Caragiale's old rival, Alexandru Macedonski, who publicized the controversy through one of his journals, Forţa Morală. Initially amazed by the similarity between the two texts, Caragiale carried out his own investigations, and, in the end, discovered that neither the writing nor Kemény had ever existed. Employing Ştefănescu Delavrancea as his lawyer, he brought Caion to trial: a court sentenced Caion for calumny, but he was acquitted after an appeal in June 1902. Several commentators believe that this was owed to a strong National Liberal presence among members of the jury. During the retrial, Caion retracted all his previous claims, and instead argued that Năpasta plagiarized Leo Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness.
Macedonski supported the lost cause until the very end, and refused to distance himself from Caion even as the latter admitted to the court that he had invented the story. His magazine also accused Caragiale of having copied Victorien Sardou's Rabagas for his O scrisoare pierdută, as well as Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru's Le Carnaval d'un Merle Blanc in D-ale carnavalului. In one memorable incident of February 14, 1902, while he was hosting a literary festivity at the Bucharest Athenaeum, Macedonski was heckled and responded by blowing a whistle. Forţa Morală was shut down soon after this episode. In parallel, the National Theater offered Caragiale a degree of satisfaction, when it decided to showcase Rabagas, leaving the public to see that it was only remotely similar to his play.
In the wake of the scandal, Caragiale attempted to resume contacts with Maiorescu, and visited him several times. His former mentor was reticent, and finally rejected the offer for reconciliation - writing in his diary, he defined Caragiale's attempts as "apple-polishings" and paradări ("affectations").
Move to Berlin
Having gained access to the Momulo Cardini inheritance, Caragiale became a rather wealthy man. According to Şerban Cioculescu, the writer soon lost most of the funds earned, transferring them to Mateiu Caragiale and his mother, but was again made rich by the death of his sister Lenci in autumn 1905—she left him the administrator of 160,000 lei. The latter event caused tensions between Mateiu and his father—Caragiale-son believed that he had been cheated out of the inheritance, and was angered by Ion Luca's decision to stop subsidizing him after he failed to complete his studies.
He was by then enchanted with the idea of moving into a Western or Central European country, where he hoped to lead a more comfortable life and be closer to the centers of culture. He was especially interested in gaining easier access to the major stages for classical music, as a means to satisfy his desire for quality in that field (he had by then come to adore the compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven). According to Tudor Vianu, Caragiale was also showing signs that he was about to enter a vaguely misanthropic phase of his life.
In 1903-1904, the Caragiales traveled through various European countries, while the dramatist again considered establishing his residence in Transylvania. They eventually moved to Berlin, the Imperial German capital, settling down in spring 1905. The choice was considered unusual, since the writer knew only some basic German expressions. This has led some commentators to speculate that the move was politically motivated. Mihail Dragomirescu believed that Caragiale was living at the expense of the German state. Cioculescu rejected this assessment, arguing that it relied on hearsay and pointing out that the chronological order provided by Dragomirescu was inaccurate. In 1992, historian Georgeta Ene proposed that Caragiale was acting as a spy for Romania in Germany.
The family lived in an apartment in Wilmersdorf and later at a villa in Schöneberg. Paraphrasing a Romanian proverb which speaks of "the black bread of exile", the dramatist jokingly referred to his relocation as "the white loaf" (franzela albă a surghiunului). He did not however isolate himself completely, becoming very close to the group of Romanian students attending the University of Berlin and to other young people: among them were poet and essayist Panait Cerna, sociologist Dimitrie Gusti, musician Florica Musicescu, and Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea's son-in-law, the literary critic Paul Zarifopol. Caragiale was also close to the linguist Gustav Weigand. He frequently traveled to Leipzig, where he would meet with Zarifopol, as well as vacationing in Travemünde. In 1906, together with Zarifopol, he visited Beethoven's house in Bonn. He was close to the dramatist Ronetti Roman, and, in 1908, confessed that he was devastated by news of his death.
Caragiale was also visited by Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea, who, as a Francophile, vehemently rejected the aesthetics of Berlin in their conversations. Delavrancea was accompanied by his daughter, Cella, a celebrated pianist.
He also traveled back into Romania for intervals—when in Iaşi, he associated with the maverick Conservative Alexandru Bădărău and his journal Opinia. He had closely followed Bădărău's career up to that point, and, in July 1906, authored an epigram on his ousting from the Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino Conservative cabinet—comparing Bădărău to Jonah and the Conservatives to a great fish that spat him out. A poem he published during the same year ridicules King Carol I on the occasion of his fortieth year in power, while parodying the style of republican poet N. T. Orăşanu; without making direct references to the monarch, it features the lyrics Ca rol fu mare, mititelul ("Taking in view his role, he was grand, the little one"), with "ca" and "rol" spelling out his name (and thus allowing the poem to read "Carol was grand, the little one"). He continued to publish various works in several other newspapers and magazines, including various Tranylvanian papers and the Iaşi-based Viaţa Românească.
His subsequent work comprised mostly correspondence with other literary figures, such as Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Mihail Dragomirescu, Alceu Urechia, and Zarifopol. He was also in touch with psychologist and philosopher Constantin Rădulescu-Motru. At the time, Caragiale planned to start work on Titircă, Sotirescu et C-ie, meaning to combine the characters of his two most successful comedies (O noapte furtunoasă and O scrisoare pierdută) into one play—this was never accomplished.
1907
In 1907, Caragiale was shaken by the outbreak and violent repression of the Romanian Peasants' Revolt, and decided to write a lengthy essay, in which he condemned the agrarian policies of both National Liberal and Conservative governments from a patriotic perspective. According to Vianu, the resulting 1907, din primăvară până în toamnă ("1907, From Spring to Autumn") was, alongside earlier essays by Eminescu and Maiorescu, the most important works of social analysis to be written by that generation.
The essay, written in harsh tones, listed what Caragiale saw as the major social problems tolerated by Romanian administrations: he discussed the landowning class, successor to the boyars, having maintained as much possible from the legacy of serfdom; he noted that, while the commerce was dominated by foreigners, the administration was gripped by a no longer aristocratic oligarchy and its far-reaching political machine. As several commentators noted, many of the topics brought up by Caragiale built on the critical overview adopted by Junimea. To the social and political problems, the text offered a monarchist solution—Caragiale expected Carol I to carry out a coup d'état against the Romanian political establishment, replacing the Constitution of 1866, which left some room for privilege through the census suffrage, with a more democratic one.
1907, din primăvară până în toamnă, first published in German under the pseudonym Ein rumänische Patriot ("A Romanian patriot"), was originally hosted by the Vienna-based newspaper Die Zeit. The translation had been completed by his friend Mite Kremnitz. In its original, the work was later printed under Caragiale's signature by the left-wing Romanian journal Adevărul. The author had agreed to make himself known after Die Zeit reached Romania and had caused the local press to wonder who had condemned the system in such harsh words.
The brochure attracted instantaneous attention in his native country, and its success was notable: it sold around 13,000 copies. There were notable differences between the two versions, which were the result of Caragiale's answer to criticism and suggestions from Christian Rakovsky, a prominent internationalist socialist who had been expelled from Romania early in the year. Caragiale elaborated on some of the essay's themes in a series of fables he published soon after.
This chain of events prompted Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea to offer him a position in the Conservative Party, as a means to reform the system from within. Caragiale rejected the offer: by then, he had grown disillusioned with the traditional political groupings, and had decided to sever all his links with them. Instead, in 1908, he joined the Conservative-Democratic Party, a rising force of the entrepreneurial middle class, led by Take Ionescu. He briefly returned to Romania several times after 1908, campaigning in favor of the Ionescu and being himself proposed for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies (before the Conservative-Democrats decided another person was more suited for the position). His involvement in politics engendered a collateral conflict with his son Mateiu, after the latter expressed a wish to become part of the administration (a project ridiculed by Caragiale-father).
In December 1907, after Opinia became a mouthpiece of Ionescu's party, Caragiale received news that its headquarters had been vandalized by A. C. Cuza and his nationalist supporters (who were students at the University of Iaşi). Just days after, when Cuza's group offered to host a Caragiale festival, he refused to participate, citing his respect for the freedom of the press. It was also during the period that he published his Din carnetul unui vechi sufleur, grouping short pieces about cultural figures such as Iorgu Caragiale, Pantazi Ghica, and Matei Millo.
Final years
Beginning in 1909, Caragiale resumed his contributions to Universul. The same year, his fantasy piece Kir Ianulea, which explored the history of Bucharest during the early 19th century and the late stages of the Phanariote period, was published by Viaţa Românească. The novella partly built on Belfagor arcidiavolo, by Renaissance author Niccolò Machiavelli, and was occasionally classified as an example of historical fiction. Similar stories use themes from the One Thousand and One Nights (Abu-Hasan) and popular anecdotes (Pastramă trufanda). Another work of the time was Calul dracului, a rural-themed account of demonic temptation, which Vianu called "one of the most perfect short stories to have been written in Romanian language".
His last collection of writings, titled Schiţe nouă ("New Sketches") saw print in 1910. During that period, after giving endorsement to a project outlined by his fellow dramatist Alexandru Davila, he aided in the creation of a new privately run Bucharest theater, and recorded its inauguration in his reportage Începem ("We Begin").
By that time, Ion Luca Caragiale became remarkably close to a new generation of ethnic Romanian intellectuals in Austria-Hungary. In 1909, he recalled the union of the two Danubian Principalities under Alexander John Cuza, and predicted the union of Transylvania with Romania. He visited Budapest to meet with Transylvanian students at the local university, and was the subject of a PhD thesis authored by Horia Petra-Petrescu (which was also the first monograph on his work). He decided to support the poet and activist Octavian Goga, who, after questioning ethnic policies in Transleithania, had been jailed by Hungarian authorities—writing for Universul, Caragiale stressed that such persecutions carried the risk of escalating tensions in the region. Later, he visited Goga in Szeged, where he was serving time in jail.
Caragiale also contributed to the Arad-based journal Românul, becoming friends with other Romanian activists—Aurel Popovici, Alexandru Vaida-Voevod and Vasile Goldiş. His articles expressed support for the National Romanian Party, calling for its adversaries at Tribuna to abandon their dissident politics. In August 1911, he was present in Blaj, where the cultural association ASTRA was celebrating its 50th year. Caragiale also witnessed one of the first aviation flights, that of the Romanian Transylvanian pioneer Aurel Vlaicu. In January 1912, as he turned 60, Caragiale declined taking part in the formal celebration organized by Emil Gârleanu's Romanian Writers' Society. Caragiale had previously rejected Constantin Rădulescu-Motru's offer to carry out a public subscription in his favor, arguing that he could not accept such financial gains.
He died suddenly at his home in Berlin, very soon after returning from his trip. The cause of death was indicated as myocardial infarction. His son Luca recounted that, on that very night, Caragiale-father was rereading William Shakespeare's Macbeth, which he found to be a moving narrative.
Caragiale dead body was transported to Bucharest in a freight train, which lost its way on the tracks and arrived with a major delay. He was eventually buried in Bellu cemetery on November 22, 1912. His longtime rival Alexandru Macedonski was saddened by the news of his death, and, in a letter to Adevărul, argued that he preferred Caragiale's humor to that of the American Mark Twain, stressing that "[w]e attacked each other often because we loved each other a lot.
Source : Wikidata
Ion Luca Caragiale
Although few in number, Caragiale's plays constitute the most accomplished expression of Romanian theater, as well as being important venues for criticism of late 19th-century Romanian society. They include the comedies O noapte furtunoasă, Conu Leonida faţă cu reacţiunea, O scrisoare pierdută, and the tragedy Năpasta. In addition to these, Caragiale authored the melodrama O soacră, a large number of essays, articles, short stories, novellas and sketch stories, as well as occasional works of poetry and autobiographical texts such as Din carnetul unui vechi sufleur. In many cases, his creations were first published in one of several magazines he edited—Claponul, Moftul Român, Vatra and Epoca. Most of his prose works have been published under the title Momente şi schiţe: they include Căldură mare, Cănuţă om sucit, Două loturi, Grand Hotel "Victoria română", as well as several pieces referring to stock characters such as Lache and Mache, Marius Chicoş Rostogan and Mitică. In some of his later fiction writings, including La hanul lui Mânjoală, Kir Ianulea, Abu-Hasan, Pastramă trufanda and Calul dracului, Caragiale adopted the fantasy genre or turned to historical fiction.
Ion Luca Caragiale was interested in the politics of the Romanian Kingdom, and oscillated between the liberal current and conservatism. Most of his satirical works target the liberal republicans and the National Liberals, evidencing both his respect for their rivals at Junimea and his connections with the literary critic Titu Maiorescu. He came to clash with National Liberal leaders such as Dimitrie Sturdza and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, and was a lifelong adversary of the Symbolist poet Alexandru Macedonski. As a result of these conflicts, the most prominent of Caragiale's critics barred his access to the cultural establishment for several decades. During the 1890s, Caragiale rallied with the radical movement of George Panu, before associating with the Conservative Party. After having decided to settle in Berlin, he came to voice strong criticism for Romanian politicians of all colors in the wake of the 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt, and ultimately joined the Conservative-Democratic Party.
He was both a friend and rival to writers such as Eminescu, Maiorescu, and Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea, while maintaining contacts with, among others, the Junimist essayist Iacob Negruzzi, the socialist philosopher Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, the literary critic Paul Zarifopol, the poets George Coşbuc and Mite Kremnitz, the psychologist Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, and the Transylvanian poet and activist Octavian Goga. Ion Luca was the nephew of Luca and Iorgu Caragiale, who were major figures of mid-19th century Romanian theater. His sons Mateiu and Luca were both modernist writers.
Biography
Background and nameIon Luca Caragiale was born into a family of Greek descent, whose members first arrived in Wallachia soon after 1812, during the rule of Prince Ioan Gheorghe Caragea—Ştefan Caragiali, as his grandfather was known locally, worked as a cook for the court in Bucharest. Ion Luca's father, who reportedly originated from the Ottoman capital of Istanbul, settled in Prahova County as the curator of the Mărgineni Monastery (which, at the time, belonged to the Greek Orthodox Saint Catherine's Monastery of Mount Sinai). Known to locals as Luca Caragiali, he later built a reputation as a lawyer and judge in Ploieşti, and married Ecaterina, the daughter of a merchant from the Transylvanian town of Braşov. Her maiden name was given as Alexovici (Alexevici) or as Karaboa (Caraboa). She is known to have been Greek herself, and, according to historian Lucian Nastasă, some of her relatives were Hungarian members of the Tabay family. The Caragiali couple also had a daughter, named Lenci.
Ion Luca's uncles, Costache and Iorgu Caragiale, also known as Caragiali, managed theater troupes and were very influential figures in the development of early Romanian theater—in Wallachia and Moldavia alike. Luca Caragiali had himself performed with his brothers during his youth, before opting to settle down. All three had stood criticism for not taking part in the Wallachian Revolution, and defended themselves through a brochure printed in 1848. The brothers Caragiali had two sisters, Ecaterina and Anastasia.
Especially in his old age, the writer emphasized his family's humble background and his status as a self-made man. On one occasion, he defined the landscape of his youth as "the quagmires of Ploieşti". Although it prompted his biographer Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea to define him as "a proletarian", Caragiale's account was disputed by several other researchers, who noted that the family had a good social standing.
Ion Luca Caragiale was discreet about his ethnic origin for the larger part of his life. In parallel, his foreign roots came to the attention of his adversaries, who used them as arguments in various polemics. As his relations with Caragiale degenerated into hostility, Mihai Eminescu is known to have referred to his former friend as "that Greek swindler". Aware of such treatment, the writer considered all references to his lineage to be insults. On several occasions, he preferred to indicate that he was "of obscure birth".
Nevertheless, as literary critic Tudor Vianu noted, Caragiale's outlook on life was explicitly Balkanic and Oriental, which, in Vianu's view, mirrored a type "which must have been found in his lineage". A similar opinion was expressed by Paul Zarifopol, who speculated that Caragiale's conservative mindset was possibly owed to the "lazyness of one true Oriental" (elsewhere, he referred to the writer as "a lazy southerner, fitted with definitely supranormal intelligence and imagination"). In his main work on the history of Romanian literature, George Călinescu included Caragiale among a group of "Balkan" writers, whose middle class status and often foreign origin, he argued, set them apart irrespective of their period—others in this category were, in chronological order, Anton Pann, Tudor Arghezi, Ion Minulescu, Urmuz, Mateiu Caragiale, and Ion Barbu. In contrast, critic Garabet Ibrăileanu proposed that Caragiale's Wallachian origin was of particular importance, serving to explain his political choices and alleged social bias.
On one occasion, Caragiale mentioned that his paternal grandfather was "a Greek cook". In several contexts, he referred to his roots as being in the island of Hydra. In one of his photographs, he posed in Oriental costume and sitting cross-legged, which was interpreted by Vianu as an additional reference to his Balkan background. Two of his biographers, Zarifopol and Şerban Cioculescu, noted that a section of Caragiale's fairy tale Kir Ianulea was a likely self-reference: in that fragment of text, the Christian Devil, disguised as an Arvanite trader, is shown taking pride in his Romanian language skills.
Investigations carried out by the Center of Theatric Research in Athens, Greece and made public in 2002 offered an alternative take on the Caragiales' origin. According to this perspective, Ştefan Caragiali was a native of Kefalonia, and his original surname, Karaialis, was changed on Prince Caragea's request. Various authors also believe that Caragiale's ancestors were Albanian or Aromanian.
Originally, Ion Luca was known as Ioanne L. Caragiali. His family and friends knew him as Iancu or, rarely, Iancuţu—both being antiquated hypocoristics of Ion. The definitive full version of his features the syllable ca twice in a row, which is generally avoided in Romanian due to its scatological connotations. It has however become one of the few cacophonies accepted by the Romanian Academy.
Early years
Born in the village of Haimanale, Prahova County (the present-day I. L. Caragiale commune, Dâmboviţa County), Caragiale was educated in Ploieşti. During his early years, as he later indicated, he learned reading and writing with a teacher at the Romanian Orthodox Church of Saint George. Soon after, he was taught literary Romanian by the Transylvanian-born Bazilie Dragoşescu (whose influence on his use of the language he was to acknowledge in one of his later works). At the age of seven, he witnessed enthusiastic celebrations of the Danubian Principalities' union, with the election of Moldavia's Alexandru Ioan Cuza as Prince of Wallachia; Cuza's subsequent reforms were to be an influence on the political choices Caragiale made in his old age. The new ruler visited his primary school later in 1859, being received with enthusiasm by Dragoşescu and all his pupils.
Caragiale completed gymnasium at the Sfinţii Petru şi Pavel school in the city, and never pursued any form of higher education. He was probably enlisted directly in the second grade, as records do not show him to have attended or graduated the first year. Notably, Caragiale was taught history by Constantin Iennescu, who was later the mayor of Ploieşti. The young Caragiale opted to follow in his uncles' footsteps, and was taught declamation and mimic art by Costache at the latter's theater school in Bucharest, where he was accompanied by his mother and sister. It is also probable that he was a supernumerary actor for the National Theater Bucharest. He was not able to find full employment in this field, and, around the age of 18, worked as a copyist for the Prahova County Tribunal. Throughout his life, Caragiale refused to talk about his training in the theater, and hid it from the people closest to him (including his wife Alexandrina Burelly, who came from an upper middle class environment).
In 1866, Caragiale witnessed Cuza's toppling by a coalition of conservatives and liberals—as he later acknowledged in his Grand Hotel "Victoria Română", he and his friends agreed to support the move by voting "yes" during a subsequent plebiscite, and, with tacit approval from the new authorities, even did so several times each. By the age of 18, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the liberal current, and sympathized with its republican ideals. In 1871, he witnessed the Republic of Ploieşti—a short-lived stated created by the liberal groups, in an attempt to oust Domnitor Carol I (the future King of Romania). Later in life, as his opinions veered towards conservatism, Caragiale ridiculed both the attempted coup d'état and his participation in it.
He returned to Bucharest later that year, after manager Mihail Pascaly hired him as one of the prompts at the National Theater in the capital, a period about which he reminisced in his Din carnetul unui vechi sufleur. The poet Mihai Eminescu, with whom Ion Luca was to have cordial relations as well as rivalries, had previously been employed for the same position by the manager Iorgu Caragiale. In addition to his growing familiarity with the repertoire, the young Caragiale educated himself by reading the philosophical works of Enlightenment-era philosophes. It was also recorded that, at some point between 1870 and 1872, he was employed in the same capacity by the Moldavian National Theater in Iaşi. During the period, Caragiale also proofread for various publications and worked as a tutor.
Literary debut
Ion Luca made his literary debut in 1873, at the age of 21, with poems and humorous chronicles printed in G. Dem. Teodorescu's liberal-inspired satirical magazine Ghimpele. He published relatively few articles under various pen names—among them Car., the contraction of his family name, and the more elaborate Palicar. He mostly performed basic services for the editorial staff and its printing press, given that, after Luca Caragiali died in 1870, he was the sole provider for his mother and sister. Following his return to Bucharest, he became even more involved with the radical and republican wing of the liberal trend—a movement commonly referred to as "the Reds". As he later confessed, he frequently attended its congresses, witnessing the speeches held by Reds leader C. A. Rosetti; he thus became intimately acquainted with a Populist discourse, which he later parodied in his works. Working for Ghimpele, he made the acquaintance of republican writer N. T. Orăşanu.
Several of his articles for Ghimpele were sarcastic in tone, and targeted various literary figures of the day. In June 1874, Caragiale amused himself at the expense of N. D. Popescu-Popnedea, the author of popular almanacs, whose taste he questioned. Soon after, he ridiculed the rising poet Alexandru Macedonski, who had publicized his claim that he was a "Count Geniadevsky", and thus of Polish origin. The article contributed by Caragiale, in which he speculated that Macedonski (referred to with the anagram Aamsky) was using the name solely because it reminded people of the word "genius", was the first act in a long polemic between the two literary figures. Caragiale turned Aamsky into a character on his own, envisaging his death as a result of overwork in editing magazines "for the country's political development".
Caragiale also contributed poetry to Ghimpele: two sonnets, and a series of epigrams (one of which was another attack on Macedonski). The first of these works, an 1873 sonnet dedicated to baritone Agostino Mazzoli, is believed to have been his first contribution to the belles-lettres (as opposed to journalism).
In 1896, Macedonski reflected with irony:
"As early as 1872, the clients of some beer gardens in the capital have had the occasion to welcome among them of a noisy young man, a bizarre spirit who seemed destined, were he to have devoted himself to letters or the arts, to be entirely original. Indeed, this young man's appearance, his hasty gestures, his sarcastic smile [...], his always irritated and mocking voice, as well as his sophistic reasoning easily attracted attention."
Over the following years, Caragiale collaborated on various mouthpieces of the newly created National Liberal Party, and, in May 1877, created the satirical magazine Claponul. Later in 1877, he also translated a series of French-language plays for the National Theater: Alexandre Parodi's Rome vaincue (it was showcased in late 1877-early 1878), Paul Déroulède's L'Hetman, and Eugène Scribe's Une camaraderie. Together with the French republican Frédéric Damé, he also headed a short-lived journal, Naţiunea Română.
It was also then that he contributed a serialized overview of Romanian theater, published by the newspaper România Liberă, in which Caragiale attacked the inferiority of Romanian dramaturgy and the widespread recourse to plagiarism. According to literary historian Perpessicius, the series constituted "one of the most solid critical contributions to the history of our theater".
Macedonski later alleged that, in his contributions to the liberal newspapers, the young writer had libeled several Conservative Party politicians—when researching this period, Şerban Cioculescu concluded that the accusation was false, and that only one polemical article on a political topic could be traced back to Caragiale.
Timpul and Claponul
The young journalist began drifting away from National Liberal politics soon after 1876, when the group came to power with Ion Brătianu as Premier. According to many versions, Eminescu, who was working on the editorial staff of the main Conservative newspaper, Timpul, asked to be joined by Caragiale and the Transylvanian prose writer Ioan Slavici, who were both employed by the paper. This order of events remains unclear, and depends on sources saying that Eminescu was employed by the paper in March 1876. Other testimonies indicate that it was actually Eminescu who arrived last, beginning work in January 1878.
Slavici later recalled that three of them engaged in lengthy discussions at Timpul's headquarters on Calea Victoriei and in Eminescu's house on Sfinţilor Street, where they planned to co-author a massive work on Romanian grammar. According to literary historian Tudor Vianu, the relationship between Caragiale and Eminescu partly replicated that between the latter and the Moldavian Ion Creangă.
Over that period, Timpul and Eminescu were engaged in a harsh polemic with the Reds, and especially their leader Rosetti. It was also then that Romania entered the Russo-Turkish War as a means to secure her complete independence from the Ottoman Empire. Caragiale reportedly took little interest in editing Timpul over that period, but it is assumed that several unsigned chronicles, covering foreign events, are his contributions (as are two short story adaptations of works by the American author Edgar Allan Poe, both published by Timpul in spring-summer 1878). The newspaper was actually issued as a collaborative effort, which makes it hard to identify the authors of many other articles. According to Slavici, Caragiale occasionally completed unfinished contributions by Eminescu whenever the latter had to leave unexpectedly.
He concentrated instead on Claponul, which he edited and wrote single-handedly for the duration of the war. Zarifopol believed that, through the series of light satires he contributed for the magazine, Caragiale was trying out his style, and thus "entertaining the suburbanites, in order to study them". A piece he authored of the time featured an imaginary barber and amateur artist, Năstase Ştirbu, who drew a direct parallel between art, literature and cutting hair—both the theme and the character were to be reused in his later works. Similarly, a fragment of prose referring to two inseparable friends, Şotrocea and Motrocea, was to serve as the first draft for the Lache and Mache series in Momente şi schiţe. Another notable work of the time is Pohod la şosea, a rhyming reportage documenting the Russian Army's arrival to Bucharest, and the street reactions to the event. Claponul ceased publication in early 1878.
Junimea reception
It was probably through Eminescu that Ion Luca Caragiale came into contact with the Iaşi-based Junimea, the influential literary society which was also a center for anti-National Liberal politics. Initially, Caragiale met with Junimea founder, the critic and politician Titu Maiorescu, during a visit to the house of Dr. Kremnitz, physician to the family of Domnitor Carol I. The doctor's wife and Maiorescu's sister-in-law, Mite Kremnitz, was herself a writer, and later became Eminescu's lover. During several meetings, Caragiale was asked by Maiorescu to write down a series of aphorisms in an album. His concise musings are contemplative in tone, and some of them constitute evidence of both misanthropy and, to a certain degree, misogyny.
In 1878, Caragiale and Maiorescu left for Iaşi, where they attended Junimea 's 15th anniversary, and where Caragiale read his first draft of the celebrated play O noapte furtunoasă. The work, ridiculing the petite bourgeoisie 's mix of liberal values and demagogy over a background of superficial culture, immediately struck a chord with the majority-conservative grouping. Its reception was one of the pivotal moments in the second period of Junimea activities, characterized by the society's expansion to Bucharest and its patronage of the arts. Other writers who marked this stage were Creangă, Slavici, Vasile Alecsandri and Vasile Conta—together with Caragiale, they soon became the foremost representatives of Junimea 's direct influence on literature. To varying degrees, they all complimented the main element of Junimist discourse, Maiorescu criticism of "forms without a foundation"—the concept itself referred to the negative impact of modernization, which, Junimea argued, had by then only benefited the upper strata of Romanian society, leaving the rest with an incomplete and increasingly falsified culture.
Ion Luca Caragiale also associated with Junimea's mouthpiece, Convorbiri Literare, and continued to contribute there even after 1885, when the society began to decline in importance. It was here that all his major comedies were first presented to the public. He did not, however, join Petre P. Carp's movement, which aimed to consolidate Junimea as a third force in Romanian politics, and remained a staunch independent over the following years. Caragiale was nevertheless associated with the Junimist journal Constituţionalul.
In early January 1879, O noapte furtunoasă was first staged by the National Theater. Its production brought the first association between Caragiale and comedian Mihai Mateescu, who went on to portray some of his most popular characters. The play was a hit, and acclaim reached Caragiale despite the fact that he had refused to have his name printed on the posters. Caragiale was soon outraged to discover that, by the second staging, his text had been toned down by the government-appointed Head of Theaters, the National Liberal Ion Ghica. When he asked for an official explanation, O noapte furtunoasă was removed from the season's program. Over the following years, independent troupes staged the play or its plagiarized versions for their own benefit. It was restored to the National Theater's repertoire in 1883, and was so successful that state theaters in cities such as Craiova and Iaşi made efforts to have it included in their own programs.
Caragiale subsequently took part in directing his plays at the National Theater, where his main collaborator was actor and manager Constantin I. Nottara. Together, they are credited with having put a stop to the techniques favored by Mihail Pascaly, replacing emphatic declamation with a more natural and studied perspective on acting.
Inspector general
In 1880, he printed Conu Leonida faţă cu reacţiunea—a play centered on an uncultured "Red" pensioner and his naive wife, who overhear a street brawl and believe that a revolution is imminent. It was also then that his first memoirs from the world of theater were published, which coincided with the release of Ion Creangă's own book of memoirs, the well-known volume Amintiri din copilărie.
Accompanied by Maiorescu, Caragiale left for Austria-Hungary. In Vienna, the two of them attended a staging of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, hosted by the Burgtheater. He was practically unemployed after returning, and, in 1881, gave up his position at Timpul. Nevertheless, that autumn, V. A. Urechia, Minister of Education in the Ion Brătianu National Liberal cabinet, assigned him the office of inspector general for the Moldavian counties of Suceava and Neamţ. Profiting from the proximity between his new residence and Iaşi, Ion Luca Caragiale became a regular participant in Junimea's activities, becoming good friends with some of its most important representatives (Iacob Negruzzi, Vasile Pogor, and Petru Th. Missir). With Negruzzi, he dramatized Hatmanul Baltag, a short story by Nicolae Gane.
He became close to Veronica Micle, a woman writer who was also Eminescu's mistress. For a while, Caragiale and Micle had a love affair, although she continued to see the poet. This caused the friendship between Eminescu and Caragiale to sour. The former was jealous of Cargiale's relations with Micle, while she resented the poet's affair with Mite Kremnitz.
Just one year after, Caragiale was moved back to Wallachia, becoming inspector general in Argeş and Vâlcea. He was ultimately stripped of this position in 1884, and found himself on the verge of bankruptcy; he thus accepted the lowly position of clerk for the civil registry administration. It is probably during this period that his melodrama O soacră was written and published—Caragiale, who was aware of its faults, indicated that it was a work from his youth, and dated it to 1876. His account is challenged by several details in the text.
In June 1883, while visiting Maiorescu's house, he received news that Eminescu had suffered the first in a series of dementia attacks (owing to a disease that was to kill him in 1889). Caragiale reportedly broke into tears. This succession of events also saw him becoming involved in conflicts among Junimea members: like Pogor, Caragiale objected to the style of Vasile Alecsandri, an aged Junimist poet, and was shocked to find out that he was ridiculing the much younger Eminescu. He thus decided to criticize Alecsandri in public, during a March 1884 meeting of the society—Maiorescu recorded in his private notes that "[...] Caragiale [was] aggressive and rude toward Alecsandri."
Caragiale's wealthy relative, Catinca Momulo Cardini (commonly known Catinca Momuloaia), who was the widow of a famous restaurateur and the cousin of his mother Ecaterina, died in 1885, and the writer had the prospect of inheriting a large fortune. He nonetheless became involved in a trial with Momuloaia's other relatives, which prolonged itself until the early 20th century.
First major successes
Months after this, his new comedy, O scrisoare pierdută, was first shown to the public. A fresco of conflicting political machines, provincial corruption, petty ambitions, and incoherent demagogy, it was an instant hit with the public. Arguably the high point of Caragiale's career, it became one of the best-known works of its kind in Romanian literature. Maiorescu was pleased by its success, and believed that it was a sign of maturity in Romanian society, which, as he put it, was "starting to laugh" at the National Liberal rhetoric.
Ion Luca Caragiale was romantically involved with an unmarried young woman, Maria Constantinescu, who worked for the Bucharest Town Hall—in 1885, she gave birth to Mateiu, whom Caragiale recognized as his son.
During the same year, Caragiale's D-ale carnavalului, a lighter satire of suburban morals and amorous misadventures, was received with booing and heckling by members of the public—critics deemed it "immoral", due to its frank depiction of adultery gone unpunished. The controversy saw Maiorescu taking his friend's side and publishing an essay highly critical of National Liberal cultural tenets (titled Comediile domnului Caragiale, it was to be reprinted in 1889, as a preface to Caragiale's collected plays). In it, the critic, who was influenced by the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer, argued that Caragiale had not failed in uplifting the human spirit, precisely because he had risen above both didacticism and egotism (see Arthur Schopenhauer's aesthetics). In reference to accusations that the play was unpatriotic, Maiorescu answered:
"[...] the present-day poems with a political intent, the odes on solemn days, the theatrical compositions for dynastic glorifications are a simulacrum of art, and not the real art. Even patriotism, the most important sense for the citizen of a state in his actions as a citizen, has no place in art as an ad-hoc form of patriotism [...]. Is there a single lyric of French patriotism in Corneille? Is there any national spouting in Racine? Is there one in Molière? Is there one in Shakespeare? Is there one in Goethe?"
The article played an essential part in reconciling the dramatist to the general public, but also led to a polemic between Maiorescu and the philosopher Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea (a Marxist who claimed that Maiorescu was contradicting himself). Dobrogeanu-Gherea argued in favor of Caragiale's work, but considered D-ale carnavalului to be his weakest play.
Theater leadership and marriage
Despite his earlier conflicts with the National Liberals, Caragiale, who still faced problems in making a living, agreed to contribute pieces for the party press, and thus briefly associated with Voinţa Naţională (a journal issued by historian and politician Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol). Under the pen name Luca, he contributed two theater chronicles. In parallel, he taught classes at the privately run Sfântul Gheorghe High School in Bucharest. This episode of his career ended in 1888, when Maiorescu ascended to the office of Minister of Education in the Teodor Rosetti cabinet (formed by a group of Junimist Conservatives). Caragiale requested to be appointed Head of Theaters, which also implied leadership of the National Theater. Although Maiorescu was initially opposed, Caragiale eventually received the post. The ultimate decision was attributed to Romania's Queen Elisabeth having asked Maiorescu to reconsider, or, alternatively, to the support offered by the influential Junimist Petre P. Carp.
The appointment caused some controversy at the time: Ion Luca Caragiale, unlike all his predecessors (the incumbent C. I. Stăncescu included), was both a professional in the field and a person of modest origins. As the National Liberals intensified their campaign against him, the dramatist drafted an open letter for the Bucharest press, outlining his intentions and explaining the circumstances of his appointment. In it, he attributed his own rise to the interest Junimea had taken in his work, while defending the literary society, which was, as he put it, "lost from the public eye at a time of political obscurity". Reviewing his own merits as a writer and manager, he elaborated and later put into practice a program for state-run theaters—according to Vianu, it signified "punctuality and rigor". He nonetheless resigned at the end of the season, and resumed his literary activities.
In January 1889, he married Alexandrina, the daughter of architect Gaetano Burelly. She was a member of the Bucharest elite, which served to improve Ion Luca Caragiale's social standing. They had two children of their own: Luca (known as Luky; born 1893) and Ecaterina (or Tuşchi; born 1894, later married Logadi). Several years later, the Caragiales brought Mateiu into their home, and Ion Luca enrolled him at Anghel Demetrescu's Sfântul Gheorghe College.
Clash with the Academy
Early in 1890, at the same time as his volume of collected works, Caragiale published and staged his rural-themed tragedy Năpasta—both writings were presented for consideration to the Romanian Academy, in view of receiving its annual prize, the Ion Heliade Rădulescu Award. Caragiale's conflict with the National Liberals reached its peak, as two of their representatives inside the forum, historian Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu and future Premier Dimitrie Sturdza, reported unfavorably. Additional criticism was voiced by the poet Gheorghe Sion, who also defended the a work by Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea (itself up for review). When the Junimist Iacob Negruzzi defended his friend, Sturdza contrasted Caragiale's works with his own version of didacticism, claiming that it altogether lacked a moral and national quality.
Both Hasdeu and Sturdza hinted at the influence exercised over Caragiale by their adversary Maiorescu, and went on to compare the dramatist with foreign writers such as Mite Kremnitz and the Jewish Josef B. Brociner. For the two liberal leaders, Kremnitz and Brociner, who had authored works critical of the Romanian establishment, were aiding to construct a negative image of the Romanian nation. Hasdeu insisted that Caragiale was himself creating problems for the country, while Sturza, showing himself more lenient in this respect, insisted that Caragiale's plays had failed to display a love for "the truth, the beautiful and the good". He stressed:
"Mr. Caragiale should learn how to respect his nation, and not mock it."
Sturdza's discourse contributed to the Academy's negative vote (20 votes against and 3 in favor), and rose Caragiale's anger. In parallel, Dobrogeanu-Gherea's candidature for the prize was rejected with 16 votes against and 8 for. In 1897, writing for the Conservative paper Epoca, the writer lashed out at Sturdza and his partisans, claiming that they viewed all humorous talents as "unholy", "useless to the nation", and "downright perilous". Vianu noted that Caragiale's article directly aimed at Sturdza's reverence for Jacobinism, collectivism, and nationalism, which, in Caragiale's own words,
"manipulated the baggage of big words with which the phony liberal school has been filling empty heads for fifty years on end".
Split with Junimea
During the controversy, Caragiale published two memoirs of Eminescu—the poet had died in June 1889. One of them was titled În Nirvana ("Into Nirvana"), and notably expanded on the early years of their friendship and on one of Eminescu's earliest amorous disappointments. In an essay of the following year, he showed himself critical of a wave of Eminescu imitators, commenting: "A lot of reasonable people will walk the path and [...] of the people that know them only a few will raise their hats; whereas an insane person [...] will be followed by all the people. That is why the success of the [1890 Eminescu edition] has overcome all the editors' expectations". He also reprinted his recollections from the world of theater, alongside pieces originally published in Claponul and various new satirical pieces.
Although this attack owed much to Junimea's discourse, Caragiale had by then turned against Maiorescu, probably due to his perception that the society had failed to support his cause at the Academy. In May 1892, he used a public conference at the Romanian Athenaeum as a venue to make known his claims against the former Minister of Education and his associates, which caused a definitive rift between the two public figures. Caragiale also wrote Două note ("Two Notes"), an article accusing Maiorescu of having modified and censored some of Eminescu's poems, and of having exploited the poet for financial gain. Around that time, he ceased contributing to Convorbiri Literare.
Late in 1892, Caragiale published two volumes of prose, including his new novellas Păcat, O făclie de Paşte and Om cu noroc. The following year, he began frequenting socialist circles as an outsider to the cause, and soon became good friends with the Imperial Russian-born Marxist thinker Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea. Financial constraints forced Caragiale to become an entrepreneur, and, in November of that year, opened a beer garden near Gabroveni Inn, in Bucharest's Lipscani area. He probably moved on soon after, and purchased a pub on a neighboring street. In a letter he wrote at the time, the writer showed that he was planning to move to Transylvania, and considered starting a career as a teacher.
In November 1893, as a gesture of goodwill towards his adversary, Alexandru Macedonski authored an article in Literatorul, in which he asked authorities if it was normal for a former Head of Theaters not to have a stable source of income—the intended recipient did not acknowledge this offer, and the Caragiale-Macedonski conflict escalated after he continued to attack the latter in the press. One year later, Caragiale leased the restaurant catering to the train station in Buzău (just like Dobrogeanu-Gherea had done in Ploieşti). His successive businesses were all struggling, and Caragiale was often on the verge of bankruptcy. Although he invested time and work in the enterprise, and even affiliated with the International Association of Waiters for a short period, he eventually decided not to renew his contract upon the years' end. His period in Buzău was noted for its other results: in February 1895, the press reported that Caragiale had given a public lecture on "the causes of human stupidity".
Moftul Român and Vatra
Together with the socialist activist Tony Bacalbaşa and the illustrator Constantin Jiquidi, he established the satirical magazine Moftul Român, which ceased print after a few months, before being revived in 1901 and becoming an important venue for social criticism. The new publication's spirit was indebted to Junimist discourse. Its title, translatable as "the Romanian trifle" or "the Romanian nonsense", alluded to the cynicism and self-importance of the emerging modern Romanian society. According to Vianu, this was a theme first debated by Junimea's Theodor Rosetti. Moft! thus mimicked the common answer to any important or merely exacerbated problem, and Caragiale also used it to illustrate what he saw as a common national feature. In one of his early editorials for the magazine, he claimed that moft was to Romanians what spleen (melancholy) was to the English people, nihilism to the Russians, chauvinism to the Hungarians, and vendetta to the Italians.
In parallel, Cargiale resumed his contacts with Transylvanian intellectuals: with George Coşbuc and Ioan Slavici, he founded the magazine Vatra (January 1, 1894), before withdrawing from its leadership. During his short stay, he printed an unsigned sketch story, Cum se înţeleg ţăranii ("How Peasants Communicate"), which mockingly recorded a lengthy and redundant dialog between two villagers, as well as a portrait of the deceased politician Mihail Kogălniceanu, and a fairy tale inspired by the writings of Anton Pann. He also translated a novella authored by his friend, Queen Elisabeth, under the title Răzbunare ("Revenge")—he is known to have been annoyed by the longueurs of the piece, and struck out large portions of it to improve the flow.
During the same period, Caragiale had the initiative to publish short fragments he had translated from classical pieces, leaving readers to guess who their authors were—Vianu, citing the speculations made by other critics, presumed that these were writers admired by both Caragiale and his friend, the schoolteacher Anghel Demetrescu (Thomas Carlyle, Alexis de Tocqueville, Thomas Babington Macaulay, François Guizot and Augustin Thierry). It was also then that he authored a piece on Prince Ferdinand, the heir apparent, who had fallen severely ill—it shows Caragiale to be a passionate defender of the Romanian monarchy, praying for Ferdinand's health. In 1898, he wrote a lengthy essay on the state of Romanian theater, in which he notably praised the actor Ion Brezeanu, who made his name through portrayals of Caragiale's characters, for, among others, his "sober and refined interpretation". Later that year, he published a new novella, În vreme de război, a fantasy set to the background of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878.
Radical Party
In 1895, at the age of 43, Caragiale decided to join the Radical Party, led at the time by former Junimist George Panu; one year later, he began contributing to its mouthpiece, the newspaper Ziua. He was also briefly associated with the newspaper Sara, published in Iaşi. Despite this, Caragiale was again an associate of the National Liberals later the same year, when the Conservative cabinet of Lascăr Catargiu was replaced with one led by Dimitrie Sturdza. Articles he contributed to Gazeta Poporului, a National Liberal newspaper, were centered on new attacks against Junimea and were signed with the pseudonyms i and Ion. In mid-November 1895, Gazeta Poporului published an unsigned article which discussed the suicide of writer Alexandru Odobescu, investigating the mundane reasons behind it—the piece is generally attributed to Caragiale. The writer placed the blame for Odobescu's death on his much younger lover, Hortensia Racoviţă, and hailed his wife, Saşa Odobescu, as a model of devoted womanhood.
This episode of his life coincided with a period when relations between Romania and Austria-Hungary were extremely tense. Three years before, ethnic Romanian leaders in Austro-Hungarian-ruled Transylvania had signed the Transylvanian Memorandum, which inflamed passions among the Hungarians and led the authors to be indicted. Conservative Party politicians in Romania had succeeded in negotiating an amnesty, but their policies were overturned by the National Liberals, who appealed to nationalist and irredentist sentiment.
Thus, Sturdza offered a measure of support to Eugen Brote, Tribuna editor and National Romanian Party activist. Brote, who fled Transylvania and planned to directly implicate the Romanian Kingdom into the conflict, attempted to replace the pro-Conservative leadership of the National Party with a selection of politicians favored by the National Liberals. As Sturdza came to lead the cabinet, both he and Brote retracted their previous statements, but again provoked the National Party by alleging that its leaders were the actual radicals. In harsh terms, Caragiale exposed the understanding Sturdza had with Brote. Soon after, he authored a short story about a con artist who traveled to the imagined Transylvanian town of Opidul-nou, posing as the nationalist Romanian writer Alexandru Vlahuţă as a means to live off the local intelligentsia. In October 1897, he was outraged by news that Sturdza had given in to Austro-Hungarian demands, and that he had expelled Transylvanian nationalists from Romania: Caragiale held a speech in which he argued that Romanians living abroad were "indispensable" to the Romanian state.
Epoca
In 1895, the writer followed the Radical group into its unusual merger with the Conservative Party. This came at a time of unified opposition, when the Junimists themselves returned to their group of origin. Caragiale came to identify with the policies endorsed by a new group of Conservative leaders, Nicolae Filipescu and Alexandru Lahovari among them. He was upset when Lahovari died not too long after, and authored his obituary.
Caragiale also became a collaborator on Filipescu's journal Epoca and editor of its literary supplement. A chronicle he contributed at the time discussed the philosophical writings of Dobrogeanu-Gherea: while sympathetic to his conclusions, Caragiale made a clear statement that he was not interested in the socialist doctrine or any other ideology ("Any idea, opinion or system is absolutely irrelevant to me, in the most absolute sense"). He also published an article criticizing Dimitrie Sturdza; its title, O lichea (roughly: "A Scoundrel"), was reluctantly accepted by Epoca, and only after Caragiale claimed that it reflected the original meaning of the word lichea ("stain"), explaining that it referred to Sturdza's unusual persistence in politics.
When answering to one of Epoca's inquiries, he showed that he had yet again come to reevaluate Junimea, and found it to be an essential institution in Romanian culture. Nevertheless, he was distancing himself from the purest Junimist tenets, and took a favorable view of Romantic writers whom the society had criticized or ridiculed—among these, he indicated his personal rival Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, whom he acknowledged to be among "the most remarkable figures of our literature", and Alexandru Odobescu. As editor of Epoca, he published works by Hasdeu alongside those of his other contemporaries and predecessors—Grigore Alexandrescu, Nicolae Filimon, Dinicu Golescu, Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Cilibi Moise, Costache Negruzzi, and Anton Pann. He also took a more sympathetic but still distant view of Maiorescu. At the time, he befriended the young poet Cincinat Pavelescu, and helped to promote his works in the press.
Universul
Around that time, Caragiale began collaborating with the formerly Junimist figure Mihail Dragomirescu, who enlisted his anonymous contributions to the magazine Convorbiri Critice. Again pressed by financial problems, he returned to a bureaucratic post—this time with the administration of government monopolies, and appointed by the Conservative cabinet of Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino in June 1899. In 1901, the position was suppressed due to cutbacks in budget spending. This coincided with Sturdza's third mandate as Premier, and further aggravated the conflict between the two figures.
At the same time, Caragiale was contributing to Luigi Cazzavillan's newly founded daily, Universul, where he was assigned the column "Notiţe critice" ("Critical Notes"). This material formed the bulk of his collected short prose volume, Momente şi schiţe, and notably comprised satirical pieces ridiculing the Romanian press' reaction to the activities of Boris Sarafov, a Macedonian-Bulgarian revolutionary who had attempted to set up a base in Romania.
He continued to pursue a business career, and, in 1901, inaugurated his own company, Berăria cooperativă, which took over the Gambrinus pub in front of the National Theater. It soon became the site of a literary circle, which included, among others, Tony Bacalbaşa and Ion Brezeanu, the satirist Dumitru Constantinescu-Teleormăneanu (known as Teleor), and the academic I. Suchianu. At the time, the Caragiales rented a house in Bucharest, near the present-day Bulevardul Magheru.
In early 1901, as Ion Luca Caragiale entered his 25th year in literature, his friends offered him a banquet at Gambrinus, where speeches were given by Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea and the Conservative politician Take Ionescu, and where a special single-issue magazine, Caragiale, was circulated among the guests. Hasdeu put aside his differences in opinion and sent in a congratulatory letter. In it, he deemed the dramatist "Romania's Molière". Nevertheless, on March 23, 1902, the National Liberal majority in the Romanian Academy, headed by Sturdza, refused to consider Momente şi schiţe for the Năsturel Herăscu Award—despite a favorable report from Dimitrie C. Ollănescu-Ascanio.
Caion scandal
Soon after, Caragiale became involved in a major literary scandal. Constantin Al. Ionescu-Caion, a journalist and student whom Tudor Vianu described as "a real pathological character", issued a claim that, in his Năpasta, the Romanian dramatist had plagiarized the work of a Hungarian-language author named István Kemény. Caion expanded on this in articles published by Revista Literară, where he provided direct comparisons between the two texts. This was received with enthusiasm by Caragiale's old rival, Alexandru Macedonski, who publicized the controversy through one of his journals, Forţa Morală. Initially amazed by the similarity between the two texts, Caragiale carried out his own investigations, and, in the end, discovered that neither the writing nor Kemény had ever existed. Employing Ştefănescu Delavrancea as his lawyer, he brought Caion to trial: a court sentenced Caion for calumny, but he was acquitted after an appeal in June 1902. Several commentators believe that this was owed to a strong National Liberal presence among members of the jury. During the retrial, Caion retracted all his previous claims, and instead argued that Năpasta plagiarized Leo Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness.
Macedonski supported the lost cause until the very end, and refused to distance himself from Caion even as the latter admitted to the court that he had invented the story. His magazine also accused Caragiale of having copied Victorien Sardou's Rabagas for his O scrisoare pierdută, as well as Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru's Le Carnaval d'un Merle Blanc in D-ale carnavalului. In one memorable incident of February 14, 1902, while he was hosting a literary festivity at the Bucharest Athenaeum, Macedonski was heckled and responded by blowing a whistle. Forţa Morală was shut down soon after this episode. In parallel, the National Theater offered Caragiale a degree of satisfaction, when it decided to showcase Rabagas, leaving the public to see that it was only remotely similar to his play.
In the wake of the scandal, Caragiale attempted to resume contacts with Maiorescu, and visited him several times. His former mentor was reticent, and finally rejected the offer for reconciliation - writing in his diary, he defined Caragiale's attempts as "apple-polishings" and paradări ("affectations").
Move to Berlin
Having gained access to the Momulo Cardini inheritance, Caragiale became a rather wealthy man. According to Şerban Cioculescu, the writer soon lost most of the funds earned, transferring them to Mateiu Caragiale and his mother, but was again made rich by the death of his sister Lenci in autumn 1905—she left him the administrator of 160,000 lei. The latter event caused tensions between Mateiu and his father—Caragiale-son believed that he had been cheated out of the inheritance, and was angered by Ion Luca's decision to stop subsidizing him after he failed to complete his studies.
He was by then enchanted with the idea of moving into a Western or Central European country, where he hoped to lead a more comfortable life and be closer to the centers of culture. He was especially interested in gaining easier access to the major stages for classical music, as a means to satisfy his desire for quality in that field (he had by then come to adore the compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven). According to Tudor Vianu, Caragiale was also showing signs that he was about to enter a vaguely misanthropic phase of his life.
In 1903-1904, the Caragiales traveled through various European countries, while the dramatist again considered establishing his residence in Transylvania. They eventually moved to Berlin, the Imperial German capital, settling down in spring 1905. The choice was considered unusual, since the writer knew only some basic German expressions. This has led some commentators to speculate that the move was politically motivated. Mihail Dragomirescu believed that Caragiale was living at the expense of the German state. Cioculescu rejected this assessment, arguing that it relied on hearsay and pointing out that the chronological order provided by Dragomirescu was inaccurate. In 1992, historian Georgeta Ene proposed that Caragiale was acting as a spy for Romania in Germany.
The family lived in an apartment in Wilmersdorf and later at a villa in Schöneberg. Paraphrasing a Romanian proverb which speaks of "the black bread of exile", the dramatist jokingly referred to his relocation as "the white loaf" (franzela albă a surghiunului). He did not however isolate himself completely, becoming very close to the group of Romanian students attending the University of Berlin and to other young people: among them were poet and essayist Panait Cerna, sociologist Dimitrie Gusti, musician Florica Musicescu, and Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea's son-in-law, the literary critic Paul Zarifopol. Caragiale was also close to the linguist Gustav Weigand. He frequently traveled to Leipzig, where he would meet with Zarifopol, as well as vacationing in Travemünde. In 1906, together with Zarifopol, he visited Beethoven's house in Bonn. He was close to the dramatist Ronetti Roman, and, in 1908, confessed that he was devastated by news of his death.
Caragiale was also visited by Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea, who, as a Francophile, vehemently rejected the aesthetics of Berlin in their conversations. Delavrancea was accompanied by his daughter, Cella, a celebrated pianist.
He also traveled back into Romania for intervals—when in Iaşi, he associated with the maverick Conservative Alexandru Bădărău and his journal Opinia. He had closely followed Bădărău's career up to that point, and, in July 1906, authored an epigram on his ousting from the Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino Conservative cabinet—comparing Bădărău to Jonah and the Conservatives to a great fish that spat him out. A poem he published during the same year ridicules King Carol I on the occasion of his fortieth year in power, while parodying the style of republican poet N. T. Orăşanu; without making direct references to the monarch, it features the lyrics Ca rol fu mare, mititelul ("Taking in view his role, he was grand, the little one"), with "ca" and "rol" spelling out his name (and thus allowing the poem to read "Carol was grand, the little one"). He continued to publish various works in several other newspapers and magazines, including various Tranylvanian papers and the Iaşi-based Viaţa Românească.
His subsequent work comprised mostly correspondence with other literary figures, such as Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Mihail Dragomirescu, Alceu Urechia, and Zarifopol. He was also in touch with psychologist and philosopher Constantin Rădulescu-Motru. At the time, Caragiale planned to start work on Titircă, Sotirescu et C-ie, meaning to combine the characters of his two most successful comedies (O noapte furtunoasă and O scrisoare pierdută) into one play—this was never accomplished.
1907
In 1907, Caragiale was shaken by the outbreak and violent repression of the Romanian Peasants' Revolt, and decided to write a lengthy essay, in which he condemned the agrarian policies of both National Liberal and Conservative governments from a patriotic perspective. According to Vianu, the resulting 1907, din primăvară până în toamnă ("1907, From Spring to Autumn") was, alongside earlier essays by Eminescu and Maiorescu, the most important works of social analysis to be written by that generation.
The essay, written in harsh tones, listed what Caragiale saw as the major social problems tolerated by Romanian administrations: he discussed the landowning class, successor to the boyars, having maintained as much possible from the legacy of serfdom; he noted that, while the commerce was dominated by foreigners, the administration was gripped by a no longer aristocratic oligarchy and its far-reaching political machine. As several commentators noted, many of the topics brought up by Caragiale built on the critical overview adopted by Junimea. To the social and political problems, the text offered a monarchist solution—Caragiale expected Carol I to carry out a coup d'état against the Romanian political establishment, replacing the Constitution of 1866, which left some room for privilege through the census suffrage, with a more democratic one.
1907, din primăvară până în toamnă, first published in German under the pseudonym Ein rumänische Patriot ("A Romanian patriot"), was originally hosted by the Vienna-based newspaper Die Zeit. The translation had been completed by his friend Mite Kremnitz. In its original, the work was later printed under Caragiale's signature by the left-wing Romanian journal Adevărul. The author had agreed to make himself known after Die Zeit reached Romania and had caused the local press to wonder who had condemned the system in such harsh words.
The brochure attracted instantaneous attention in his native country, and its success was notable: it sold around 13,000 copies. There were notable differences between the two versions, which were the result of Caragiale's answer to criticism and suggestions from Christian Rakovsky, a prominent internationalist socialist who had been expelled from Romania early in the year. Caragiale elaborated on some of the essay's themes in a series of fables he published soon after.
This chain of events prompted Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea to offer him a position in the Conservative Party, as a means to reform the system from within. Caragiale rejected the offer: by then, he had grown disillusioned with the traditional political groupings, and had decided to sever all his links with them. Instead, in 1908, he joined the Conservative-Democratic Party, a rising force of the entrepreneurial middle class, led by Take Ionescu. He briefly returned to Romania several times after 1908, campaigning in favor of the Ionescu and being himself proposed for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies (before the Conservative-Democrats decided another person was more suited for the position). His involvement in politics engendered a collateral conflict with his son Mateiu, after the latter expressed a wish to become part of the administration (a project ridiculed by Caragiale-father).
In December 1907, after Opinia became a mouthpiece of Ionescu's party, Caragiale received news that its headquarters had been vandalized by A. C. Cuza and his nationalist supporters (who were students at the University of Iaşi). Just days after, when Cuza's group offered to host a Caragiale festival, he refused to participate, citing his respect for the freedom of the press. It was also during the period that he published his Din carnetul unui vechi sufleur, grouping short pieces about cultural figures such as Iorgu Caragiale, Pantazi Ghica, and Matei Millo.
Final years
Beginning in 1909, Caragiale resumed his contributions to Universul. The same year, his fantasy piece Kir Ianulea, which explored the history of Bucharest during the early 19th century and the late stages of the Phanariote period, was published by Viaţa Românească. The novella partly built on Belfagor arcidiavolo, by Renaissance author Niccolò Machiavelli, and was occasionally classified as an example of historical fiction. Similar stories use themes from the One Thousand and One Nights (Abu-Hasan) and popular anecdotes (Pastramă trufanda). Another work of the time was Calul dracului, a rural-themed account of demonic temptation, which Vianu called "one of the most perfect short stories to have been written in Romanian language".
His last collection of writings, titled Schiţe nouă ("New Sketches") saw print in 1910. During that period, after giving endorsement to a project outlined by his fellow dramatist Alexandru Davila, he aided in the creation of a new privately run Bucharest theater, and recorded its inauguration in his reportage Începem ("We Begin").
By that time, Ion Luca Caragiale became remarkably close to a new generation of ethnic Romanian intellectuals in Austria-Hungary. In 1909, he recalled the union of the two Danubian Principalities under Alexander John Cuza, and predicted the union of Transylvania with Romania. He visited Budapest to meet with Transylvanian students at the local university, and was the subject of a PhD thesis authored by Horia Petra-Petrescu (which was also the first monograph on his work). He decided to support the poet and activist Octavian Goga, who, after questioning ethnic policies in Transleithania, had been jailed by Hungarian authorities—writing for Universul, Caragiale stressed that such persecutions carried the risk of escalating tensions in the region. Later, he visited Goga in Szeged, where he was serving time in jail.
Caragiale also contributed to the Arad-based journal Românul, becoming friends with other Romanian activists—Aurel Popovici, Alexandru Vaida-Voevod and Vasile Goldiş. His articles expressed support for the National Romanian Party, calling for its adversaries at Tribuna to abandon their dissident politics. In August 1911, he was present in Blaj, where the cultural association ASTRA was celebrating its 50th year. Caragiale also witnessed one of the first aviation flights, that of the Romanian Transylvanian pioneer Aurel Vlaicu. In January 1912, as he turned 60, Caragiale declined taking part in the formal celebration organized by Emil Gârleanu's Romanian Writers' Society. Caragiale had previously rejected Constantin Rădulescu-Motru's offer to carry out a public subscription in his favor, arguing that he could not accept such financial gains.
He died suddenly at his home in Berlin, very soon after returning from his trip. The cause of death was indicated as myocardial infarction. His son Luca recounted that, on that very night, Caragiale-father was rereading William Shakespeare's Macbeth, which he found to be a moving narrative.
Caragiale dead body was transported to Bucharest in a freight train, which lost its way on the tracks and arrived with a major delay. He was eventually buried in Bellu cemetery on November 22, 1912. His longtime rival Alexandru Macedonski was saddened by the news of his death, and, in a letter to Adevărul, argued that he preferred Caragiale's humor to that of the American Mark Twain, stressing that "[w]e attacked each other often because we loved each other a lot.
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Filmography of Ion Luca Caragiale (4 films)
Scriptwriter
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, 1h59Directed by Lucian Pintilie
Origin Roumanie
Genres Drama, Comedy, Comedy-drama
Actors Victor Rebengiuc, Gheorghe Dinică, Mircea Diaconu, Ştefan Iordache, Răzvan Vasilescu, Florin Zamfirescu
Roles Writer
Rating77%
Dans une petite société bourgeoise, les personnages intriguent et connaissent des aventures amoureuses.
, 1h59Directed by Lucian Pintilie
Origin Roumanie
Genres Drama, Comedy
Actors Victor Rebengiuc, Gheorghe Dinică, Mircea Diaconu, Ştefan Iordache, Florin Zamfirescu, Mitică Popescu
Roles Writer
Rating77%
Au milieu d’un carnaval tenu par une petite société bourgeoise, marivaudages et aventures amoureuses se multiplient jusqu’à ce qu’un billet doux égaré provoque le scandale.
Mofturi 1900 (1966)
, 1h18Origin Roumanie
Genres Comedy
Actors Iurie Darie, Grigore Vasiliu Birlic, Alexandru Giugaru, Ioana Bulcă
Roles Story
Rating72%
Telegrams (1960)
Directed by Gheorghe Naghi
Origin Roumanie
Genres Comedy
Actors Grigore Vasiliu Birlic, Mihai Fotino, Alexandru Giugaru, Dem Rădulescu, Draga Olteanu Matei
Roles Writer
Rating76%